gown lets the flood of sombrely-clad louts of seventeen and eighteen
rush past the Eton-collared, more brilliant youngsters of fourteen, so
that they may secure the place nearest to the pipes, or sit in remote
corners with their backs against the wall, covered by the form in front
from any possible detection.
The master makes his way to his desk, sits down and raps out suddenly:
"Stop talking there; how many times have I told you to stop talking
as soon as you come into the room? Harrison minor, are you _still_
conversing? Thank you, thank you for your momentary attention. If you
will be so good as to bring me the last three hundred lines of the
Fourth Æneid on Thursday, second school, we shall be, I think, at
one again. Shut your books. Write out the Rep." Silence then follows,
except for the scraping of pens, the dropping of books and mathematical
instruments, and the whispered monotone of one boy who is copying it
straight from the book on to the paper. Several others after a time, at
a loss how to continue, peer gently over their neighbours' shoulders
and, enlightened, proceed.
One of the bigger boys, more muscular but even less intellectual than
the rest, produces a paper-covered novel of Mr. Nat Gould from his
pocket and proceeds to read with some fervour when he has copied his
repetition: two others are engaged in an acrimonious conversation, "You
---- young swine, I'll damned well lick you after for that. Blast you,
take your arm away, I can't see a word you've written."
"I say, your crowd were a lot of stumors yesterday; so you thought you
were the House for the 'pot.' My God! Talk about swank!"... And so on,
until the master who has hurriedly been correcting some analysis, which
the form wished to have back (this is an English lesson, by the way)
suddenly raises his head, apparently having heard and seen nothing, and
says, "Anybody finished yet? Ah! you have, Dixon. Now hurry up, the
rest of you; I've a lot to do to-day," and then breathlessly he turns
to his corrections again, until he has done, then calling the nearest
boy to him tells him to give out the corrected papers. "By the way,
we'll correct that Rep. you've just done. I'll read it out to you. Four
marks a line and one off for every word wrong--"
"_Anon the great San Philip she bethought_ ..."
He wheezes the noble poem out in lines like so many rashers of bacon,
gives the form a moment's respite in which to add (which they do very
generously to themselves) the number of marks. He then proceeds to give
a long disquisition on adjectival adjuncts and subordinate clauses.
"Surely, Morgan, your knowledge of the Latin tongue should have shown
you that----"
A school messenger interrupts.
"The Head Master to see Haxton at once, sir." Subdued murmurs and a
casual whistle emanate as a fair-haired, good-looking boy goes off,
blushing. In an undertone one of the biggest fellows at the back says
to his neighbour, "There'll be Hell to pay, my son, if that little fool
starts confessing his and our past, he's gone for confirmagger-pi-jaw,
he won't stick much of that Devil's talk; he'll let on at once,
and--Hell! Yes, sir? No, sir, I wasn't talking. Oh, sorry sir, I
thought you meant now, sir, I was just asking how many marks Jaques had
got, sir."
While the monotonous teaching of analysis goes on, several of the boys
at the back might be noticed by any one not quite blind to be writing
notes which are hurriedly passed along the form surreptitiously,
others again are feverishly learning Greek irregular verbs for their
next hour, when they go to a man who canes for every failure to answer
a question; more still might be seen writing lines under cover or
pretence of taking notes, for the master has now finished his analysis
and is carefully reading out notes from a "Verity" edition of _Twelfth
Night_, which play the form are supposed to be enjoying, notes which
each boy has carefully to take down and learn, notes in which he
learns for the thousandth time that moe = more, nief = hand, and some
interesting but watered-down details about the lives of Penthesilea,
Ariadne, and other classical favourites. In the intervals of taking
down whatever portion of this rubbish that various members of the form
think fit, the idiot of the form (there is always one) is being quietly
tortured in many ways, gentlemen behind kick him violently forward, the
quiet youth on his left has been silently pinching his ears and pulling
his hair, with a calculating brutality that exists scarcely anywhere
except in the Public Schools and the South Sea Islands.
An air of supreme boredom and lassitude is evident on every face in the
room; the very atmosphere and clothing seem to be pervaded with it and
invite it.
Suddenly Haxton, now quite pale and obviously shaking, returns: he
writes a note quickly. The recipient begs for permission to be excused
for a little; he must go to the sanatorium. After carefully burning a
lot of incriminating documents in his study he makes his way to the
sick-room and feeling really quite unwell is able to induce the nurse
(in the absence of the doctor) to admit him.
Meanwhile the class pursues unruffled the even tenor of its way. A bell
rings, it is 8.15; early school is over and the pangs of hunger prevail
over all other feelings. Breakfast is supervised by unfortunate junior
masters, who are supposed to use their eyes to count the 300 boys and
to see that they do not cut their loaves on the cloth. Soon afterwards
Second School begins, a classical hour; for this there has been half
an hour's special preparation after breakfast--a grammar grind--the
man to whom they go now being renowned for his strong arm and often
stretched-out hand.
The classroom is much the same (they all are) as the one to which I
introduced you before breakfast. The master, younger, square-jawed,
not intellectual but grim, rather sour: the face is more remarkable
for an absence of any virtue than for any special presence of vice. He
gives the boys three minutes in which to make sure of their work: then
they are all marched out into the middle of the room, asked questions
rapidly on the Greek irregular verbs; a boy goes down a place; another
supplants him; the whole system is apparently to keep the body moving
so that the brain may perhaps capture some motion and become alert;
rather does it seem to any rational, unprejudiced bystander a method
to involve wasting a maximum amount of time for a minimum amount of
actual good. These boys are most certainly no more alert than they were
in early school: they do not crib here, or write notes to each other
or read Mr. Nat Gould, they are far too frightened for that; they are
terrorized like a rabbit in front of a gigantic snake, fascinated,
almost loving, certainly admiring the strength of a man who has such
power. He is not inhuman either, this master, he has a stock of jokes,
each of which is carefully stowed into a particular compartment of
his brain, brought out in a particular order and calling for the same
amount of quiet laughter every time.
He is very popular among the boys and in existing conditions perhaps
deserves to be. When you are being slave-driven, you at least like your
driver to be simple, honest and modelled on a plan you can understand:
he has to beat you, he is paid for it; if he can afford to throw you a
joke, however old and threadbare, yet like a bone thrown to a pariah
dog in the street, you relish it all the more, for you know it is more
than your due.
This man achieves very excellent results in all examinations: he
is known as the best teacher of grammar in the school. He is the
"thorough" man who will make his way and become a leading Head Master
in the end. He has no sympathy, no intellectual insight, he has been
bred on the same plan that he is now inculcating and thinks it the
finest system ever devised for the education of boys: in fact the
only system. He knows that several ignorant authors, journalists and
politicians occasionally decry the results of his teaching, but he is
aloof, superior to all these "common cries of curs"; more aristocratic
even than Coriolanus, his downfall in the next decade will be as it
was with the aristocrats in the French Revolution, really terrible to
witness.
It is with a sigh of relief that the Modern Shell hear the bell that
rings the close of this hour. Immediately following on this, the form
splits up into sets for mathematics, a subject in which they never make
much progress for several reasons.
In the first place the set master is a queer man with ideas; he took a
low degree in mathematics himself and never knew much about them, but
it worries him to find that no boy ever seems to know when to divide,
multiply, add or subtract by pure reason.
All the set seem accustomed to see a type on the top of an exercise or
on the blackboard and to copy this type feverishly a hundred times,
thereby to gain many marks and think they have accomplished something.
For the fetish of marks is what makes Modern Shell do any work at all.
They have a perfect passion for gaining them and this master panders
to it by giving them thousands a day: consequently the set works at
lightning speed, but never achieves anything, for none of its members
seems capable of reason. Even though geometry is substituted for
Euclid they still contrive to learn propositions as a species of very
difficult prose repetition: they still believe in and treat algebra and
arithmetic as two vastly different subjects which can have no connexion
with each other, the mere presence of an "_x_" in an arithmetic paper
frightens them out of their senses. They dabble in stocks and shares,
compound proportion, approximation in decimals, quadratic equations,
logarithms and progressions, and yet immediately they get out of form
and into the tuck-shop they are unable even to count the change they
get out of half a crown without a mistake, they cannot measure the
simplest article accurately and have no more power of logical reasoning
than they had as babies. Consequently when they come to examination
time they fail. Given a type they will work out a hundred examples with
scarcely a mistake. Asked for the answer of an original sum and they
are nonplussed at once and multiply when they should divide, add when
they should subtract and vice versa, entirely without method, principle
or reason. Yet these fellows work hard enough, not from fear of the
master in this case, he scarcely ever punishes, but in order to gain
some of the thousand marks over which he is so generous.
The last school of the morning is spent to-day in history. Geography is
also supposed to be taught but is gently allowed to slide except for
the drawing of a few maps. The history master is a dear good man, a
thorough "slacker," well beloved of the whole school and staff.
The preparation is as usual "to read a chapter of Oman." Some notes
are read out from the master's "undergraduate" notebook very slowly
and listlessly and as slowly and listlessly taken down by most of
the form unless they have anything else to do such as drawing "Old
Clothes-horse" (the nickname of the master), a proceeding sometimes
fraught with danger for "Old Clothes-horse" has an uncomfortable habit
of suddenly remembering his vocation, of saying to himself, "I must be
stern." On such days he will demand of such a one the drawing, and bawl
out at the top of his voice: "You disgraceful scoundrel, you son of a
plough-boy--you--you--disgusting hound--you will write out the whole of
the last hundred pages of the history"--a punishment naturally enough
afterwards remitted to one-half, one-third, one-tenth, but even then
fairly severe. His method of imparting history runs too much on the
lines of doing the minimum of correcting work (which though he does not
know it, is a step in the right direction, but done in his case from
the wrong motive) and of placing implicit confidence in the reading of
the work of one man.
Dates and comparisons of characters, knowledge of laws and deft little
paragraphs about things like Habeas Corpus, Barebones, and so on, with
neat compartments at the end of each period containing the great names
in literature of that period (as if it ever did a boy any good just to
know the name of Dryden, Pope, Burke, and Johnson without having read
a word of their works), these combine to form his stock in trade. His
boys turn out fairly well in stereotyped examinations, but they leave
school knowing no real history at all, worse still with a positive
distaste for a subject with which they have really not even a nodding
acquaintance.
Morning school is now over and an hour is to pass before the midday
dinner. You think perhaps these boys now are going to have complete
rest, a chance of being by themselves, time for reading--not a bit
of it. There will now be compulsory net practice or shooting on
the range, recruit drill, a racquets or a fives tie to play off,
an imposition, probably several, in arrears to be polished off,
book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting or music classes to attend, or,
worst of all, private tuition. Dinner comes as a temporary relief in
which discussion runs rife on the latest scandal, scores at cricket,
the news in the _Sportsman_, the newest catch-word, how So-and-So was
ragged, the latest form of torture devised for the most prominent
idiot, and all the customs, fashions and frivolities of their little
world. After dinner a stampede is made to change from the appalling
funereal garments of the morning which are given an all too brief
respite, into the flannels necessary for the House match or nets of
the afternoon. Some luckless ones who have perchance dropped a pen in
the deadly stillness of a strict master's form or refused to do any
preparation for over a week in a slack one's set, are hounded round the
quadrangle for half an hour in an ignominious punishment drill, which
drill sometimes contains over a hundred boys, which speaks well for the
discipline of the school.
Suppose it is a House-match day, and nearly every day in the summer
term sees one of these in progress, those in the Houses concerned, not
actually playing, will all be compelled to watch: nay, in fact so
imbued with the evils of over-athleticism are they that they would all
rather miss anything than one ball bowled, one run scored; their eyes
are riveted on to the cricket pitch; the whole staff is there equally
occupied; the life of the little nation is at stake; nothing at all
matters except the winning or losing of this single match. It is the
one big world event about which quarrels will be raised, criticism
will be rife for days to come, in dormitory, in the Common Room, in
the privacy of the masters' own sitting-rooms or in the studies of the
boys. Other Houses not actually playing will be practising assiduously
at nets until another bell rings to show that time is up; a rush is
made to change back into the monastic garb preparatory to getting up
more work (or pretending to) for afternoon school. The first period
of the afternoon to-day is given up to what is called science for
our forms; that is to say, a few nerveless experiments which never
come off are tried by a man whom it is hard to differentiate from the
bottle-washer of the laboratory, a man with an accent (not that that
matters intrinsically), but a man with the vulgar attributes that
accompany accent when promoted to spheres unused to such things; living
in an air of snobbishness and hypocrisy, this "bounder" bounds more
than ever he need and causes howls of derision as, in his nervousness
he mispronounces words of which even Modern Shell have somehow acquired
the correct tonation. A smattering of physics, chemistry, electricity,
magnetism, heat and light, is now doled out in such minute quantities
that no one ever derives any real idea of what is going on, what
they all mean; just enough to temporize, to fill the parents' minds
with the idea that their sons are being liberally educated in every
department of life.
From this waste of time the boys proceed to their last hour of real
school "teaching" for the day--French or German, taught again in sets
by a man who took high honours in history and then spent six months
in a German _pension_. His foreign accent is deplorable but he is a
conscientious man and makes a valiant effort at least to keep a day
ahead of his set (not a very hard task) in knowledge. He, however, has
ideas on the subject of teaching modern languages and does not believe
too much in the mental gymnastic of grammar, but buys periodicals in
French and German, and also modern novels for his set to read: being
an entirely honest man his ignorance is being continually shown up,
particularly as he is unfortunate enough to have in his set one boy who
spends all his holidays in Belgium or Switzerland, but his popularity
carries him through, and his very lack of knowledge makes the boys work
to see if they can beat him on his own ground: this, it is easy to see,
is the Modern Shell's intellectual treat of the day. In examinations
they do nothing, but most of them get some sort of a smattering of,
and begin really to take an interest in, languages whose periodicals
sometimes even publish football and cricket results and occasionally
have pictures which remind them of certain London penny weeklies that
they avidly read in dormitory.
A bell signalizes tea and the end of school. A hurried repast, for
physical training follows hard on the top of it, a compulsory form of
exercise that most boys frankly detest. After twenty minutes of this
the preparation bell goes, and excitement is rife to see whether it is
"The Cadger" or "Hopeless George" on duty. If the former, work and the
right work has to be attempted: if the latter, novels appear as if by
magic and work is given, for an ecstatic hour, the go-by. Another bell
(the bell is so constantly in use that a special man has to be kept who
does nothing else but attend to this department) summons the school to
evening chapel, a repetition of the morning roll-call, except that a
lusty roar in a well-known hymn will testify to the Almighty that there
are 300 boys who are well pleased that "another ruddy day is o'er." As
a matter of fact it is not "o'er," for a further hour of preparation in
the privacy, however, of their studies this time awaits them. Pathetic
indeed is the sight of the tired-out wan faces of the Modern Shell
boy, whose head can be seen nodding over the page of a dull grammar,
trying in vain to keep awake and remember the consequences that will
accompany his ignorance on the morrow if he forgets what a quasipassive
or oxymoron is.
At last, at ten o'clock the bell rings once more and with a burst
of energy he flings his book aside and rushes upstairs only, in all
probability, to find that it is his duty to keep "nixes-watch," that
is, to stand near the end of the dormitory until nearly midnight to
listen for the step of the House-master, who might otherwise pry into
practices that would fill his complacent mind with disquiet. About
midnight, worn out, yet not a whit improved in body, soul, or mind the
luckless wight will be allowed to get into bed, to sleep, perchance to
dream of a new regime, of a better order of things, where life will not
be one dull, eternal round of uselessness, useless knowledge, useless
punishments, useless games, useless virtues, useless vices, useless
restraint, useless discipline, but free, progressive, happy, where no
such things take place as have taken place in this absolutely truthful
picture I have drawn of a day in the life of a boy in the Modern Shell.
EPILOGUE
_Education is the release of man from self. You have to widen the
horizons of your children, encourage and intensify their curiosity and
their creative impulses, and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies.
Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them,
they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive suspicions, hostilities,
and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the
Universe._--"The World Set Free."
MODERN SHELL: TO-MORROW
In the first place it must be borne in mind that one great difference
in the attitude of this form to life in general in the future will be
caused by the fact that it will be a mixed class of boys and girls,
and will be recruited from all sections of the people, so that there
will be every chance of there being practically no divergence in
age, physique or intelligence between the top and bottom, to use the
existing phraseology, between A and Z, as they will then be placed.
The boys and girls will be permitted to get up as early in the morning
as they like, but not later than 7.30 in the summer months. Breakfast
will follow at once in different Houses, boys and girls sitting at
the same table as much mixed as possible, friend with friend. Chapel
for those who wish to go will follow, a service short, devotional,
sincere, containing a few personal prayers, a rousing well-known hymn
and a lesson of particular applicability not necessarily taken from
the Bible alone, but from any of the great masterpieces of the world.
Masters and mistresses who feel inspired to give a personal address
of not more than five minutes on any problem that may have been
occupying their minds may interpolate their sermonette in the place of
this lesson. This, the only service of the day, will not take longer
than twelve minutes. If the weather is fine most of the work of the
day will be done out of doors, some of it, such as the manual labour
classes, the digging, road-mending, gardening, will necessarily be so,
but in favourable circumstances the intellectual side of the curriculum
will be as far as possible carried out in the open air. If, however,
this is to-day impossible, the Latin hour will be conducted in a
classroom, where inspiring pictures, replicas of old masters and pieces
of sculpture will make an already bright, airy, cheerful, healthy
classroom still more so.
The master, mistress, girls and boys will all be dressed in those
clothes considered most sane and healthy from the eugenics point of
view; flannels and gymnastic dress will probably be most popular.
The Latin taught will certainly not be of the grammar-grind sort:
conversation will go on between girl and boy, others in the same class
will be constructing a Roman amphitheatre, or working out, on a sort of
_Daily Mail_ war board, a campaign of Pompey or Cæsar.
The life of a Roman citizen will be enacted and written about by the
classes: all the time the boys and girls will be doing the work; the
teacher only flitting about from group to group as his or her presence
is required, encouraging here, pointing out errors there, all the time
acting as any real teacher ought to act, that is, not foisting his or
her opinion on to the form but developing their own ideas on the lines
most desirable for them.
The hour instead of passing as hours in school are passing nowadays
in periods of long, slowly dragging minutes that make time seem
interminable to those who take out their watches in the vain hope that
Father Time will take a hint and have mercy, will go so quickly in
the interest and joy of real work and progress that the form will only
regret having to leave the subject, were it not that the next is just
as full of interest, just as helpful.
It is mathematics in this second period carried out in a sort of
engineering schoolroom where practical implements are at hand for
testing all their theoretical results.